‘The National Portrait Exhibition having led to the exposure of so many errors with regard to the portraits of British worthies and the artists who painted them – it turning out in many cases that the names given were in both respects altogether wrong – it has been suggested that county magnates and others interested […]
Brighton Museum is part of The National Gallery Masterpiece Tour 2018 and currently has on display A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling by Hans Holbein the Younger. To accompany this is the See Portraits, Be Portraits exhibition showcasing portraits from our own fine art collection. The exhibition has been curated with local school […]
I attended this seminar at the National Portrait Gallery, keen to develop our work with portraits at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath. Portraits are one of our most popular subjects with schools and nurseries. I was also looking forward to seeing more of the work of Howard Hodgkin the National Portrait Gallery exhibition: Howard […]
As a portraitist, Sir William Rothenstein (1872-1945) is probably best-known for his chalk drawings and lithographs of famous figures, over two hundred of which are held at the National Portrait Gallery. Rothenstein launched himself on the British art scene as a portraitist in the early 1890s, and continued the practice until his death (one of […]
It is over forty-five years on since the last major museum retrospective of the work of Leon Underwood in 1969. Although Underwood (1890-1975) has been described as ‘the precursor of modern sculpture in Britain’ he is an overlooked figure in the history of Modern Art. Between the 1920s and 1950s he created an innovative body […]
This year we remember the Welsh artist Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782), who brought a good deal of the Italianate light a flavour to British art of a former age. He was not the only Welshman who found the Italian experience of great importance to his thinking and feeling for art. Quite recently we were offered this […]
Last month I attended the excellent Portrait Network seminar Copy, Version and Multiple: the replication and distribution of portrait imagery. I was particularly interested in the papers on Lely’s studio practice and Victorian carte-de-visite portrait photographs but the last talk of the day by video artist Marty St James resonated unexpectedly with another area […]
Amy Marquis, Study Room Supervisor (Paintings, Drawings and Prints), The Fitzwilliam Museum, received a Bursary from Understanding British Portraits in October 2012. Here she reflects on the aims of her chosen project. The Fitzwilliam Museum‘s collection, like all collections, is constantly changing, whether this be through high profile acquisitions like our recent successful appeal to save […]
